Chapter Fifteen #2
I was looking around as we walked, trying to orientate myself, when the door of the centre block of flats opened and a middle-aged man exited. He spotted us, raised a hand, and called out a greeting to Rhys before heading towards a row of parking spaces.
All the pennies dropped at once. ‘Is this your place?’
‘It is,’ Rhys said, looking vaguely uncomfortable, especially when he realised I’d come to a halt.
‘Were you just about to walk past your own home without saying you lived here?’ I questioned.
His discomfort appeared to be growing.
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Why?’
He dug his hands into his pockets and all at once lost about twenty-five years. He looked like a sheepish little boy in the headmaster’s office.
‘Because I didn’t want you to think I’d engineered it so that we’d end up at my place and you’d feel coerced into coming inside, if you hadn’t wanted to.’
There was a lot to unpack in his explanation, and I took my time doing it.
‘Is it possible that maybe you’re a bit of an overthinker?’ I said carefully.
‘It has been said.’
I looked around at the deserted area. I suppose if he was an entirely different kind of man, maybe this situation might have made me nervous or twitchy. But I felt as relaxed with Rhys as I always did.
‘I’m not easily coercible,’ I said at last. His face still looked serious. ‘Is that even a word?’ That, at last, released a smile. ‘Nothing about this,’ I said, wafting my hand in the air to encompass where we were, ‘or our friendship makes me feel anything except completely comfortable.’
Rhys nodded and the lingering traces of concern left his face.
‘To be honest, I can’t remember the last time a man was this worried that I’d misinterpret his actions. Probably because it’s never happened to me before.’
‘Then you’ve been mixing with all the wrong men,’ he said, finally extracting one hand from his pocket, along with his door key.
‘You might be right there,’ I murmured low enough that he couldn’t hear. He had already turned towards the entrance to his building.
‘So now that we’ve sorted that out, can I interest you in coming up for a beer or some wine?’
My nod came with a smile that seemed to live permanently on my lips in his company.
I followed him into the deliciously cool air-conditioned hallway and towards a bank of lifts.
A tiny thrill of anticipation thrummed through me as we waited for the carriage to arrive.
My desire to see inside his home was more than just estate agent nosiness.
Seeing how a person lived was one of the most illuminating ways to understand them better.
And Rhys was a puzzle I was still trying to figure out.
His flat was on the middle floor of the five-storey building. It was everything he’d said: modern, airy, functional, and impersonal. It escaped being bland only by scattered splashes of colour from a handful of brightly patterned cushions and a huge Aztec-style rug on the floor.
The layout was open plan, and I followed him into the kitchen area, where he went straight to the fridge.
I pulled up a stool at the breakfast bar.
It was the kind that resembles a chip basket and was just about as comfortable.
To protect my bare legs, I tugged on the skirt of my dress, making the neckline dip lower and display more cleavage than I would have liked.
I knew Rhys had already seen more than that, but that had been a medical emergency – or at least that was how I liked to categorise it.
‘White or pink?’ he asked, straightening from the fridge with a bottle in each hand.
‘Pink, please.’
He pulled two glasses from a cupboard and filled them generously. The wine was deliciously cold and refreshing and Rhys took a generous swig before wrinkling his nose.
I took a subtle sniff of the wine in my own glass, which had tasted just fine to me.
‘At the risk of putting you on sleaze alert again, would you mind if I left you for five minutes so I can jump in the shower? I promise you it’s not my usual routine with visitors, but one of us doesn’t smell that great, and it’s definitely not you.’
‘That’s okay. I mean, you’re perfectly fine as you are, but I’m happy to entertain myself for a bit.’
Rhys took another sip then set his wine glass back down on the counter beside mine.
‘I won’t be long. Make yourself at home.’
For someone who is very used to being alone in other people’s homes, I felt strangely wrong-footed to be on my own in Rhys’s.
I waited until he left the room before gingerly extracting myself from the stool.
With my wine glass still in hand, I wandered back into the living area, taking my time to focus on the room’s layout and the furniture he’d chosen.
It told me very little about the man himself .
. . but the walls yielded far more information.
The plain white expanses were decorated with an eclectic accumulation of artwork.
Modern abstracts sat beside watercolours.
Monochrome paintings beside framed prints so vibrant I almost felt the need to pull out my sunglasses.
I perused each one, walking around the lounge as though I was visiting an art gallery.
The styles were too diverse to identify his preferences.
But they did tell me that the man loved art, although as he was a graphic designer, that was hardly breaking news.
There was just one wall I’d yet to examine, bare of all artwork except for two drawings in matching black frames.
That was their only similarity. The first one I instantly recognised.
I saw it in my dreams every night. It was burnt into the retina of my memory.
Rhys had perfectly captured the dignity of the majestic old oak.
I stepped closer, awed by the intricate detail that so clearly depicted the grainy bark and the individual leaves of the tree.
This was no ordinary sketch; it was a piece that exuded so much emotion I could feel my throat tightening in response.
This was how art was meant to make you feel, I acknowledged, as my eyes were drawn to the gouge marks the lightning had left in its wake.
I lifted a hand and gently ran my fingers over the glass of the frame.
The second picture was just as powerful, but in a totally different way.
The subject was a newborn infant, held in a pair of slender feminine arms. I immediately recognised what I was looking at.
The baby was staring upwards towards its mother, whose face wasn’t visible in the sketch.
But it didn’t have to be. I knew the strands of hair that fell down like curtains towards the infant were blonde.
I knew the fingers lovingly touching the soft skin of the child’s cheek belonged to Annalise.
I just knew it. I didn’t need to look at the lower right-hand corner of the frame .
. . but I did anyway. Rhys’s name was there.
He was barefoot following his shower, so I didn’t hear him enter the lounge.
I was alerted to his return by a kind of sixth sense that seemed to go into overdrive whenever I was near him.
One of my regular senses also kicked in as my nose captured the aroma of cedar and apple from whatever products he used in the shower.
I turned around to find him much closer behind me than I’d realised. I jumped and he immediately stepped back.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
I turned back to the two pictures again. ‘These are amazing.’
He gave a small gracious nod of thanks.
‘The one of Tasha is obviously quite old.’ I wondered if he knew how his expression softened when his gaze fell on the sketch of his daughter and his partner. Ex or otherwise, there had been love there when he’d drawn that portrait. It was visible in every line of his pencil.
A totally different expression slid onto his features as his eyes then went to the oak tree.
‘This one is – obviously – more recent.’
I gave a slow nod, stepping even closer to the picture of the tree.
‘I’ve got an entire sketch book full of similar drawings,’ Rhys admitted, looking a little rueful.
‘I was starting to worry that I was getting obsessed. I was afraid that tree would be the only thing I’d ever draw again.
’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘Which would have been very bad for my career prospects.’
It was surprisingly hard to tear my eyes away from the image of the oak tree. ‘I ignorantly thought you just created book covers and stuff like that. I had no idea you were such a talented artist.’
He gave a small shrug and stepped away from the drawings to sit at one end of the black leather sofa. I took a place at the opposite end.
‘The book covers pay the rent and the bills. The other stuff is just for me, at least for now.’
‘Well, if those two examples are anything to go by, you need to get a gallery interested enough to show your work. You’re that good.’
He looked modestly embarrassed but also a little bit pleased, which made me feel like I’d done something right today.
An idea was whispering in the back of my head, refusing to be silenced. It was sharpening and crystallising, even as I began to speak.
‘Do you paint houses?’ I said with absolutely no preamble.
It’s no wonder he got the wrong end of the stick.
‘Do you mean like decorating them?’
I spluttered inelegantly into my wine and narrowly escaped a coughing fit.
‘No. I mean like drawing houses. In ink or charcoal or some other medium.’
Rhys gave a casual shrug. ‘I guess I’m what they call a pen for hire. I could do any of those.’
‘Then I’d like to hire you.’
His head tilted again, less adorable puppy this time, more curious collie.
‘I’m always looking for new ways to make my business stand out from the competition,’ I explained.
‘And I wanted to have something unique to give my clients when a deal is completed, be it a house sale, or letting a property.’ I nodded, as much to myself as him, as the idea grew larger and sharper in my mind.
‘If you’re interested, I’d like to commission you to do sketches of the properties my clients are leaving behind, as a keepsake gift for them. ’
There was something very warm in those green eyes as they looked back at me.
‘That’s a really nice idea. It’s way more personal than simply sending a bunch of flowers.’
‘Oh well, I’ll still do that too,’ I said, knowing my conscience wouldn’t allow me to withdraw my custom from Beth and her flower shop. ‘I just thought this could be a really nice addition.’
‘It would be,’ he agreed.
‘And you’d be okay with it? I mean, you’d have to tell me what a fair price would be for your work.’ My nose crinkled as I wondered if my suggestion was going to alter the dynamic of our relationship in any way.
But it’s a really great way of keeping him in your life, isn’t it? Ellie of old chose to point out. To be fair, this time at least, she wasn’t wrong.
‘So,’ Rhys said, drawing out the word with clear amusement. ‘Does this mean you’d be my boss?’
‘No. I mean, not really. Well, kind of. Maybe just a little bit.’
His grin lit up his face, the room, and a place in my heart where it really had no business setting up home. ‘I think we could give it a try.’